


The Mirror, Crack'd

by Queue



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: F/M, Iambic Pentameter, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-18
Updated: 2010-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-11 03:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/pseuds/Queue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>See Geoffrey, scriptless (that's right, off the page),/exploring his attachment to the stage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mirror, Crack'd

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Andeincascade](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Andeincascade).



> Set after the close of the series.

The green room stinks of smoke.  
So not a shock,  
all things considered. God, the stupid shit  
that actors do—and prob'ly always have:   
it's fairly certain, Geoffrey thinks, that Willy  
S and Global brethren trashed their cords  
with some illicit substance, never mind  
the damage deeper registers might do  
to all their girlish attitudes and what  
sad traces of youth's clarity they longed  
to bring to bear on Marlowe's timeless lines.

So, yeah, okay: the stench of RJR  
and B&amp;H is pretty much to be   
expected. What he never thought he'd see   
in space so soaked with angst and vanity,  
so papered with my-dues-are-paid veneer  
glued up by fragile ego's queens (bad beer  
disguising desperation's breath) is this:  
that glass reflecting darkly, hit or miss,  
Dame Tragedy's beloved wannabes  
in all their backstage cue-awaiting glees  
is shattered straight across.

It's shards.   
It's knife-edged fragments.   
Hell, let's call a spade a slice  
of bread: it's _toast_.

And look: it's possible   
that Geoffrey might have given tired assent   
to lead where once he acted—have, perforce,   
become belike that verray parfit gentil   
knyght of old who dueled and fought for what   
he thought was right and, not so very by   
the way, wound up a slave to circumstance:   
in short, flat broke and doing his own plumber's   
work—that he, unbarbered, barb'rous, might  
have, leaking badly through his unplumbed depths,  
determined that he might be safer at   
the helm of HMH Dramatic Task  
than rowing, sweat-drenched, bench-bound, in its hold.

It's _possible_. It may, if Geoffrey's true  
to his own self, be _probable_. But what   
that _doesn't_ mean is that he's lost the heart   
of what it is to be a player on   
the stage.

He knows: they _need_ their mirrors.

More:   
he knows the reasons why. He's been there, brushes   
good to go, all clotted with the shade   
that night's dark tale requires, never you mind  
the breakups and the unpaid rent and all  
the herky-jerky interrupted hell  
of their so-called real life: what occupies  
the dressing-room reality is far  
more vital, venous, virile, vile—more _them_  
than outside circumstances.

Nonetheless,  
no actor worth their salt puts on their words,   
their cues, their _self_, without the pitiless   
compassion of their looking glass. They _can't._  
_He_ can't. He needs—_they_ need!—that outside validation  
of their skill in trickery,   
that proud reflection back of what the years  
(already spent or still prospective) put   
towards being someone other than they are  
out there where parents and/or spouses and/  
or God spend wasted time attempting to   
persuade them to Just Have A Backup Plan,  
like Teaching Kids, or Normal Office Work,   
or even Tending Bar, For Chrissakes—anything  
but "that dumb dream of acting, yeesh,   
grow up already, get a real job," yadda  
yadda, white noise, leave me fucking _be_—  
where was he? where were _they_? beset, besieged—  
ah, yes: _bedecked_, bedizened, shown themselves  
in all their trumped-up glory. Life be damned:   
if they're to have their hour upon the stage,  
they damn well want to hit said stage full sure   
they look their best. Hey, sound and fury rock,   
but leaving a good-looking corpse trumps all,  
_n'est-ce pas_?

(And that goes double if your deadly  
pallor comes from Stage White Number Two  
and sheetly selvage edges of your shroud   
evoke the Zellers white sale more than they  
bespeak the horrors of the afterlife.)

...ahem. Line call. Where were we? Ah, of course:  
the mirrors and the actors, codependency  
incarnate, bless their hearts (he learned   
to say that from an expat Southern belle;   
he's never met a better way to cut  
another down while seeming innocent  
and kindly. Damned miraculous). And he  
would just be one among them, trying hard  
to see his face more clearly on one side  
of faults (his own? the shattered glass's?) or   
the other one—to grasp his slippery  
and sharp identity du jour for long  
enough to pin it to his face and hair   
and clothes and, safely masked, enter stage left—  
if Ellen hadn't drunk her way across  
his path again and back into his life.

Thank God for Ellen.

See, because it's clear:  
when all is said and done, she is the sum  
of what he needs, his other half.

...the issue  
there: he's more than one.

To channel Walt  
(the poet laureate of _autre temps_  
_et moeurs_): he's large; he fucking well contains  
those multitudes, those many players, those  
bipolar bodies feeding on his gifts  
and genius. Not to put too fine a point  
on it: he needs a troupe in order to   
stay centred, to stand barely on the line   
of sanity between what others would   
call heaven and what he would call Olivier.

He needs a _theatre_.

He _needs_  
these four walls—empty, echoing, scoured bare  
of character and characters and _soul_—  
to rouse, to rise, responding to his voice,  
and, in so doing, wake that dream within   
a dream that lies inside the worst of plays   
(and, if he's honest—which he hates to be  
but has to be, else _not_ be—in the best   
of musicals as well)—that godforsaken   
spark of life that terraforms the boards   
of every stage, no matter what it's made   
of, notwithstanding Shakespeareville and Disneyworld   
and _soaps_—and force it, shaking, bleeding   
out, into the gobo-driven light  
to glory in its artificial life  
and, glorying, to be more than the sum  
of all its parts: to be, at last, a real  
and honest thing:

a _story._

So.

He needs   
a company. And, hey: the company   
needs mirrors in their dressing rooms. And pot.  
A few light bulbs. An ASM or three.   
A budget. Makeup. Duct tape. Costumes. And  
a well-stocked green-room liquor cab'net. Not  
to mention psychic space for any ghost  
that cares to wander past (excepting those  
come refugee from Castle Dunsinane:   
best not to invocate malfeasance right  
up front by harboring the Scottish play  
or any of its castoffs, thank you oh  
so kindly).

But.   
Also?   
He needs his wife.  
His Ellen.   
Well. Okay: _her_ Ellen, her  
ownself—she's no big fan of ownership;  
his Ellen only by agreement. Which  
she made, amazingly. Thank all the pow'rs   
that be, throw salt across one shoulder, spit   
and turn against the clock, duck black cats, choose   
your superstition, pick from indices   
of luck, just count your bless— _his_ blessings: she   
said yes. Indeed, she's said it twice: once all   
those years ago before his inner mirror   
crack'd, and once a lot more recently.   
Which shows she's just as bugfuck nuts as Geoffrey   
is (like there was doubt there?). Still and all,  
he's not about to question her support,  
such as it is: great sex; high drama; that  
intuitive and solid grasp of what  
makes theatre the centre of the world;  
appreciation of his hawkish self   
and handsaw personality; but most,  
the capability of showing him  
himself, refracted back a hundred times  
more accurately than the shiniest  
of looking glasses.

Theatre and lights  
and company comprise what Geoffrey _needs._  
Those things plus Ellen? Those are what he _is_.

(...still: note to self: fix mirrors. Just in case.)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Andeincascade for the C6D Midsummer 2010 Challenge.


End file.
